Looking for Streaming Media Software Recommendations

[Eric Shubert]

FWIW, I'm running a Zbox (zotac, atom) with mythbuntu as a frontend to a 
1080p TV via hdmi. I expect that the model with the amd fusion cpu would 
do just as we, if not slightly better from what I've read. You can get a 
MB (mini or micro) with the fusion CPU on it for less than $100 if you 
hunt around (I got a mini MSI board with Fusion for $65 after rebate). 
Ram is relatively cheap for these as well. FWIW, I even run mine off an 
8G flash drive. Works like a champ. I also have a MythTV backend (also 
mythbuntu) I built with an old P4, 512M, 2x300G drives for storage, and 
2 tuner cards. This runs off a 4G flash drive. You really don't need 
much horsepower on a backend. Transcoding and commercial flagging do 
take a bit of cpu, but if you're not in a hurry for it, who cares? The 
P4 just cranks it out a little slower, but this doesn't affect feeding 
the front ends. (I also have installed a mythtv frontend on my deskbook).

Good stuff.

-- 
-Eric 'shubes'

On 06/22/2012 09:10 PM, Michael Butash wrote:
> I've tried dnla-based stuff with my xbox360 for tv, but found it was
> more hassle than it was worth as m$ doesn't support decent codecs for
> playback anyways. Can your tv actually dnla high-res media? For me if
> not, it's kind of a why-bother.
>
> With the 360 being useless for high-def playback, I built an ubuntu
> "media pc" with an hdmi nvidia card, xbmc, and never looked back. Until
> it died at least.
>
> I got a boxee box, and that could do netflix, 1080p mkv playback,
> cifs/nfs, and just about everything in between, and was pretty decent.
> At least until an update a week ago bricked it. grr.
>
> Sadly I don't think hardware vendors "get it" to make actual playback
> function openly supporting varieties of codecs, but dnla was a start.
>
> What kind of tv is yours?
>
> More interesting is they're hacking the "smart" tv's now, though not
> sure if their hardware would actually support decent playback of
> anything but codecs cut off at the knees to protect media cartels and
> not anger them. Having root hopefully takes back control of what amounts
> to a lightweight linux box on just about every modern smart tv, just add
> xbmc and some hardware gpu offloading. I would ass-u-me they have some
> level of hardware decode on them, so let the games begin.
>
> http://hackaday.com/2012/06/20/getting-root-on-a-sony-tv/
> http://www.samygo.tv/
>
> Sadly I bought an lcd the year before smart tv's became the rage, so I'm
> stuck with external hardware via hdmi. Now if i could find one that
> didn't die/suck.
>
> -mb
>
> On 06/22/2012 12:57 PM, Nadim Hoque wrote:
>> For that setup i used mediatomb. It is a ver simple program that says it
>> can do transcoding but I was unable to do it. I think debian has it in
>> the repos, but if not pretty easy to compile. One it is set up and the
>> config file has the correct info in regards to databases (it can us
>> mysql or sqlit as the back end) the the rest is through a web interface.
>>
>> Nadim Hoque
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> From: Mark Phillips
>> Sent: 6/22/2012 12:24
>> To: Phoenix Linux Users
>> Subject: Looking for Streaming Media Software Recommendations
>>
>> I have a underused Debian headless server, a network enabled DLNA TV,
>> so.....why not stream some movies to this TV? I am looking for
>> recommendations for a streaming media server that will run on a headless
>> Debian server.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>
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